The local paper for the Upper East Side
WEEK OF NOVEMBER ALONG THE LINES OF GREATNESS ◄ P.12
2-8 2017
BID TO LID HIGH-RISE HEIGHTS DEVELOPMENT Upper East Side community board seeks to preserve affordable housing, five-story walk-ups — and a low-rise lifestyle — by capping the height of new buildings on York, First, Second and Third Avenues at 210 feet Mayor Bill de Blasio and first lady Chirlane McCray host Gracie Mansion Halloween dressed at Clark Kent and Wonder Woman on Friday, October 27. Photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office
BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN
Over the past decade, a forest of slender, cloud-piercing towers has been shoehorned into modestsized lots along West 57th Street and lower Fifth Avenue. Skyscrapers on broader footprints have shot up from the Hudson Yards to the World Trade Center. While not on the same scale, even the Upper West Side — long resistant to bulky, boxy, outsized glasssheathed structures — has been getting its fair share since 2007, when the 37-story Ariel East and 31-story Ariel West first dwarfed its neighbors in the Broadway corridor. For years, the Upper East Side, with plenty of exceptions, was a low-rise redoubt. Not anymore. The dawn of the Second Avenue subway, and a long-anticipated, if embryonic, eastward flow of residents, has fueled a construction boom that is literally raising the roof on the neighborhood. And it has already provoked a significant backlash: Community Board 8, which represents the old Silk Stocking District, and City Council Member Ben Kallos, who has campaigned to “Stop SuperScrapers,” are backing a proposal
DE BLASIO AND THE VANISHING VOTER ELECTIONS As a lackluster mayoral campaign sputters to an end — with scant enthusiasm for de Blasio, Malliotakis or Dietl — fears abound that the city’s incredible shrinking electoral turnout could hit new lows on November 7 BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN
Citizen 360, on First Avenue and East 89th Street, towers above its traditional red-brick neighbors. The mostly low-rise precinct is filling up with cloudpiercing towers, leading community and political leaders to seek height limits on future buildings. Photo: Douglas Feiden to rein in the loftier heights sought by dozens of developers. “No one wants to live in the shadow of a billionaire,” Kallos said in an interview. “When you have
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buildings that are 60- or 100-feet high, and then suddenly someone wants to build 500-feet high or
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Once upon a time, most New Yorkers loved to vote. Exercising the franchise was a sacred rite of passage for immigrants and new arrivals. It was a civic, moral and even social obligation for citizens of long-standing, too. Not anymore. Sadly, en masse voting is a relic of the past. And the evidence can be found in the campaigns of Bill de Blasio. Naturally, the diminution of the ballot box long pre-dates the incumbent mayor. But it hit record lows on his watch. In the 2013 mayoral race, barely one million of the city’s 4.2 million
registered voters showed up as the then-public advocate battled the thenformer MTA boss Joe Lhota. In his triumph, de Blasio achieved a dubious honor: a 24 percent turnout, the most abysmal in city history. Flash forward four years. On September 12, the mayor clobbered Sal Albanese by a 74 percent-to-16 percent margin in the Democratic mayoral primary, hailing a “resounding victory,” which indeed it was. What he didn’t say: Only 14 percent of Democrats trekked to the polls.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 26 Jewish women and girls light up the world by lighting the Shabbat candles every Friday evening 18 minutes before sunset. Friday, November 3rd – 5:32pm. For more information visit www.chabaduppereastside.com
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